In today's Web 2.0 world, JavaScript and Dynamic HTML are at the center of the hot new approach to designing highly interactive pages on the client side. With this environment in mind, the new edition of this book offers bite-sized solutions to very specific scripting problems that web developers commonly face. Each recipe includes a focused piece of code that you can insert right into your application.

Why is JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook so popular? After reading thousands of forum threads over the years, author and scripting pioneer Danny Goodman has compiled a list of problems that frequently vex scripters of various experience levels. For every problem he addresses, Goodman not only offers code, but a discussion of how and why the solution works. Recipes range from simple tasks, such as manipulating strings and validating dates in JavaScript, to entire libraries that demonstrate complex tasks, such as cross-browser positioning of HTML elements, sorting tables, and implementing Ajax features on the client.

Ideal for novices as well as experienced scripters, this book contains more than 150 recipes for:

Working with interactive forms and style sheets

Presenting user-friendly page navigation

Creating dynamic content via Document Object Model scripting

Producing visual effects for stationary content

Positioning HTML elements

Working with XML data in the browser

Recipes in this Cookbook are compatible with the latest W3C standards and browsers, including Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2, Safari, and Opera 9. Several new recipes provide client-side Ajax solutions, and many recipes from the previous edition have been revised to help you build extensible user interfaces for Web 2.0 applications. If you want to write your own scripts and understand how they work, rather than rely on a commercial web development framework, the JavaScript & DHTML Cookbook is a must.

Danny Goodman

Danny Goodman has been writing about personal computers and consumer electronics since the late 1970s. In 2006, he celebrated 25 years as a freelance writer and programmer, having published hundreds of magazine articles, several commercial software products, and three dozen computer books. Through the years, his most popular book titles - on HyperCard, AppleScript, JavaScript, and Dynamic HTML - have covered programming environments that are both accessible to non-professionals, yet powerful enough to engage experts. His Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference, now in its third edition, is an O'Reilly bestseller.To keep up to date on the needs of web developers for his recent books, Danny is also a programming consultant to some of the industry's top intranet development groups and corporations. His expertise in implementing sensible cross-browser client-side scripting solutions is in high demand and allows him to, in his words, "get code under my fingernails while solving real-world problems."

Danny was born in Chicago, Illinois during the Truman Administration. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in Classical Antiquity from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He moved to California in 1983 and lives in a small San Francisco area coastal community, where he alternates views between computer screens and the Pacific Ocean.

I've been trying to learn JavaScript and let me tell you, the most recommended books are impenetrable for a tyro, and were worthless to me as texts. He gets fairly sophisticated at times, but more advanced scripts or discussions have always had enough groundwork laid so that they are understandable.

Although called a cookbook, this is actually the only really good introductory book for javascript I've read, and I'm including online tutorials. I'm also using a major comprehensive book -- once I understand something from reading Goodman's work, I can find a section in the other book to expand my knowledge.

Also, I like his writing style and pace. He assumes a certain amount of intelligence and attention to prior pages.

My quibble with what would have been a five-star rating is overly frequent errata. But still, for me, this has been the only "introduction to JavaScript" that has done the job for me.

Like most web developers, I typically will reach for one of the many JS libraries when it comes time to add client-side enhancements to my

web applications. This is usually the obvious choice for the sake of saving time on projects, and keeping costs down... but quite often, many libraries are simply overkill for a simple little js/dhtml enhancement.

As such, that is what lead me to this book. I was hoping the cookbook format would give me some fresh ideas on doing some simple js/dhtml work and it most definitively delivered.

Perhaps the most valuable parts of this book for me were the aspects of working on the DOM. Additionally, I always enjoy reading different

techniques for dealing with client-side form validation.

To me the coverage on loading dynamic data/ajax was good, but I still think that when entering into that realm of JS, it is usually time to

deploy one of the libraries I mentioned earlier.

All in all this has become a valuable resource that I often refer to during my daily work. I would recommend this book for those looking for the cookbook approach... those looking for a pure JS book/primer, check the title by the same author.